Hi, my name is Lisset Magallanes, and I’m a mom of three from California. I never imagined I would be writing something like this, but our family is going through one of the hardest moments of our lives and we are humbly asking for your help.

On May 30, 2025, our oldest son Adrian (11 years old) was diagnosed with a Grade 5 Arteriovenous Malformation (AVM) in the cerebellum part of his brain—one of the most complex and high-risk types.

The day before, on May 29, Adrian woke up around 4:30 AM with the most severe headache and neck pain. We took him to urgent care, then to the ER, where a CT scan revealed a large mass in his brain. He was urgently transferred by ambulance to Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles (CHLA), where an MRI and angiogram confirmed the diagnosis.

We've met with multiple neurosurgeons and they have all told us the same heartbreaking thing: his AVM is inoperable, despite the extremely high risk of rupture, stroke, or bleeding.

As parents, that didn’t sit right with us. It felt like an impossible thing to accept. We can't just wait for the worst to happen. Since then, we’ve been searching for hope, reaching out to neurosurgeons across the country for second, third, and fourth opinions. And finally we found it.

Dr. Nirav Patel at Brigham/Mass General in Boston has reviewed Adrian’s scans and believes he can perform surgery to remove the AVM. It will be a long, complex, high-risk surgery followed by weeks of rehabilitation; but it’s the only chance to give my son Adrian a real future without the constant threat of sudden rupture, brain bleed, and/or stroke.

Adrian is just a kid, but he is also so much more. He is strong, resilient, brave, kind, smart, and loving. He loves baseball and dreams of one day playing in the MLB or becoming an LAPD officer like his uncles. He deserves a chance to live his dreams, and not to live each day in fear of what might happen next.

We will need to temporarily relocate to Boston for at least 6 weeks, possibly longer, for the surgery and recovery.

We are humbly asking from the bottom of our hearts for your help. If you are able to donate anything, no matter how small, it will go directly toward helping us give Adrian the care and support he needs.

And if you can’t donate, please consider sharing this page. Every prayer, every kind word, and every share means the world to our family.

Thank you for reading, for praying, for caring, and for standing with us. We are holding on to hope, faith, and trusting God. We believe that with the help of our family, friends, and God, we will get through this one day at a time.

With love and gratitude,

Lisset, Adrian, and our family

#TeamAdrianJr ⚾️